A Cold Supper

It is summer and I am missing my mother. Tonight I am missing her because of Cold Supper.

When she was alive she would serve my favorite summer meal: Cold Supper.

It consisted of colorful Pyrex and Boonton Ware bowls taken directly from the fridge to the table.

They were filled with her homemade potato salad, cole slaw, sliced New Jersey Beefsteak Tomatoes, pickled beets (God, how I miss her pickled beets!), sliced hard boiled eggs, tuna salad with minced celery, pickled cucumbers and onions, egg salad, ice cold grapes or cherries, scallions and celery stalks chilled in two pitchers of ice water, and sometimes the special treat of sliced watermelon.



We didn't use Saran Wrap to cover the bowls in the fridge- just saucers on the small bowls and and plates on the big ones. So our lids were chilled cold. An extra treat for a young kid to eat on a cold plate on a hot summer night.

Our table for four was crowded with so many plates and bowls. Our beverage options always included iced tea or ice milk (yes- ice cubes floated in milk!)

My Grandmother would sit at the table and peel and dice ten pounds of cooked potatoes in advance. My Dad would go to the local farm stands for the veggies or the backyard for the tomatoes. My Mom would quietly cook up a storm on Saturday or Sunday and we'd be set for most of the week. A mid week meal of burgers or knockwurst or corn on the cob (mmmmnnn Jersey Corn!) would break things up - but my favorite was always Cold Supper.

Although she has been dead for almost ten years, I still miss my Mom. Awful. It still surprises me that the waves of loss and longing arrive, unexpected, in the mundane, the routine ordinaries of life.

It shouldn't, really; because that is exactly how her love arrived and gladly, stayed.